Integrated System Eliminates Paper, Eliminates Errors, and Cuts Costs

The result, said Julie Frye, Director of Operations, is lower cost with fewer errors.

The system tracks job applicants, completes the processes for on-boarding new hires, allows self-service benefits enrollment, processes time-off requests and approvals and tracks training, she explained.

“It integrates fully with the Evolution Payroll system, so there are no duplicate entries. It stores all the documents that become the employee folder. You can choose which documents the employee can see and which become [confidential] HR documents.

“You can post employee handbooks, policies and alerts. With a single log-in, employees can view their pay stubs, W-2s and time-off balances.”

New hires can complete their W-4 and direct deposit authorizations using electronic signatures.

Supervisors receive prompts to conduct performance reviews, which are then tracked online.

Frye said the system is “designed for our client base of small to upper mid-size clients, but it’s also scalable to larger enterprises.”

One of the early users has been the Forsyth Humane Society, with 49 employees. Amy Justice, who handles FHS’s finances, is especially enthusiastic about the system’s reporting functions.

“I get lots of requests for miscellaneous reports,” she said, “such as a list of everybody’s birthday, or who’s hourly and who’s salaried and what are their pay rates, or a list of employees and their supervisors. In the regular payroll system we couldn’t do that kind of report. Now all the data in payroll are automatically populated in Advanced HR, where the report writer is super easy to use.

“Now any field in the database is accessible and reportable,” she said. “This is especially useful for budgeting.”

Online benefits enrollment saves lots of time, she added. “Employees can see what they’ve selected and what it will cost. I can see what they’ve done and hit “accept” and it’s all sent automatically to payroll. This takes away a ton of paper and saves a lot of time.”

The system is comprehensive, Frye said, but “you don’t have to use everything in it. If you have lots of turnover, for example, as is typical in restaurants, then applicant tracking and onboarding are very helpful. It’s ideal for group insurance, because it assures everything’s filled out properly and employees can see what they’ve selected.

“Think of a business with one HR person and an employee working remotely. It’s ideal for that situation because you have no papers going back and forth.

“It really saves tons of time and eliminates errors. In fact, avoiding just one or two simple errors in benefits administration can easily pay for the service. It’s a no-brainer for any size company.”

Katie Sherwood, Savers Admin’s Advanced HR administrator, echoed Frye’s comments. “The biggest change [when a client starts using Advanced HR],” she said, “is the time savings. It revolutionizes the internal work flow. It saves a huge amount of time because it syncs with payroll, it eliminates user errors and it lets the company connect with employees in ways you couldn’t before.

“It also makes transitions in HR personnel much easier,” she continued, “because there’s not a lot of paperwork processes that the HR Director has to keep inside her head. It makes it a lot easier to train new HR personnel.”

Sherwood said she’s never known a company that’s embraced the integrated system to go back to manual processing.

The installation is very easy, she continued. “A few clients didn’t even need training. Typically we’ll send the admin their login credentials and they start playing around with it. Then we schedule training. It usually takes about 30 to 45 minutes, but we can go longer if you want to go into greater depth.”

Training is usually through a webinar, though Sherwood said she’s gone on-site for “some very local” clients.

“They usually don’t need employee training [for the self-service features], though that’s offered. The system is pretty much self-explanatory.”

Another benefit of the system, she said, is its audit function. “It tracks every change that’s made, so if an error ever happens, it’s quickly dealt with and easily explained.”

The system is fully owned by Asure Software, Savers Admin’s parent company, she said, and “developers are constantly introducing new features based on clients’ feedback.”

In the fourth quarter of this year, for example, Advanced HR will be integrated with Asure Force, the company’s timekeeping system, so with a single logon, an employee can clock in and out, sign up for benefits, manage time off and look up pay stubs.

At every step, the system is designed to save time, save motion and save paper, and at the same time to eliminate errors.